Eibhlín wrote:When should I use "a" in which sentences? [I'm not talking about the possessive word "a" (his, her, their)]

There are at least six a's in Irish, not even including the possessive determiner you just mentioned. I imagine you have in mind either the relative particle a or the worn-down form of the preposition do that is found in verbal noun phrases (e.g. rudaí a dhéanamh "doing things/things to do"). Either way, your question does not have a simple answer.

Eibhlín wrote:And what is the difference between Tá uaim and Ba mhaith liom?

Tá uaim can mean "I need" as well as "I want". Ba mhaith liom can express "I would like" as well as "I want". For instance, if I usually had milk on hand but I happened to be out of it, I might say Tá bainne uaim. But if I were drinking tea and thought it would taste better with some milk in it, I'd be more likely to say Ba mhaith liom bainne.

"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

For vocabulary-building purposes, it might help to know that these nouns historically had dative forms generally equivalent to the genitive minus -e. They're obsolete nowadays, but some still appear in various fixed expressions. For instance:

cuir i gcéill "give [someone] to understand, show [someone]" (lit. "put into sense")focal i gcluais "a word in the ear, a whispered word"le cois "along with, in addition, besides" (lit. "to leg")faoi chois "underfoot" (cuir faoi chois "suppress")ar chois "afoot" (tá sí ar a cois "she is on her feet, she is out and about")

"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

Eibhlín wrote:And what is the difference between Tá uaim and Ba mhaith liom?

linguoboy wrote:Tá uaim can mean "I need" as well as "I want". Ba mhaith liom can express "I would like" as well as "I want". For instance, if I usually had milk on hand but I happened to be out of it, I might say Tá bainne uaim. But if I were drinking tea and thought it would taste better with some milk in it, I'd be more likely to say Ba mhaith liom bainne.

Gabh mo leithscéal, is mise eejit, ach,maybe if you try to understand the literal meaning of the idiom, you might get the shade of the meaning.Ba mhaith liom == (it would be) (good) (with/for me).In Northern English dialect, we have a similar phrase:"It's ok by me" meaning roughly, "I approve of it ."Put into the subjunctive, like the Irish phrase, you would then get:'I would approve of it'.Hence linguaboy's interpretation, NOT translation, 'I would like' is very accurate'It expresses desire, not need.It is information, not an imperative.Le meas,Deghebh.

This is okay if you mean that she is physically at the school now. In English you can also use this phrase to mean that someone is of school-going age and regularly attends school, in which case I would say "ar scoil" instead of "ag an scoil".

"cónaí" only means "living" is the sense of residing somewhere, so you can't use it like this.I would say "Tá an ceart chun beatha ag gach duine." - "Everyone has the right to life." (I also found "an ceart chun marthana" when looking for "right to life")

In Irish you always féachaint ar something, so it would be "Ní féidir liom féachaint ar Bríd." Also, this means "I can't watch Bríd", if you want to say "I can't see Bríd" you have to use the verb "feiceáil".

This is where it gets interesting: when you use "féachaint ar" you are using a verb followed by a preposition, so the word order required is to place the verbal noun directly after the phrase "Ní féidir liom" followed by the prepositional phrase. But "féiceáil" doesn't require a preposition, so the word order is as follows: "Ní féidir liom Bríd a fhéiceáil". The verbal noun gets sent to the end of the clause preceded by the particle "a" which causes lenition.

Hello. I'm sorry, because many people died in Soma. If anyone knows this, they're sad. I'll never forget it.

"Fáilte" means "welcome". The normal greeting in Irish is "Dia dhuit" (to one person), "Dia dhaoibh" (to many people). You might also use "Haigh".

The phrasing of this is not entirely natural in English I'm afraid. I would suggest:

"I'm sorry for the many people who died in Soma. All who know of this are saddened greatly, we will never forget." This sounds kind of unaturally literary in normal speech, but I think the tone fits the solemnity of the message.

When the adjective "álainn" is used attributively as it is here, you don't need the "go", so "Is cailín álainn í Cáit", but "Tá sí go hálainn".

Also it's worth mentioning that in predicative sentences like these, it's very common to put the adjective first, i.e.: Is álainn an cailín í Cáit.

Ciarán12 wrote:The phrasing of this is not entirely natural in English I'm afraid. I would suggest:

"I'm sorry for the many people who died in Soma. All who know of this are saddened greatly, we will never forget."

YDMV (Your Dialect May Vary), but in my English "I'm sorry because" and "I'm sorry for" don't mean the same thing. My sorrow could because of the suffering of the survivors, in which case it's them I'm "sorry for", not the dead.

I find eolas a bit odd here. Generally it implies a more comprehensive sort of knowledge than fios, so it sounds to me like you're saying only those with an understanding of what happened in Soma which goes beyond a bare knowledge of the facts are saddened.

"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

linguoboy wrote:YDMV (Your Dialect May Vary), but in my English "I'm sorry because" and "I'm sorry for" don't mean the same thing. My sorrow could because of the suffering of the survivors, in which case it's them I'm "sorry for", not the dead.

I find eolas a bit odd here. Generally it implies a more comprehensive sort of knowledge than fios, so it sounds to me like you're saying only those with an understanding of what happened in Soma which goes beyond a bare knowledge of the facts are saddened.

Yeah, I wasn't entirely sure which idiom I should use for "to know" here, I went for "eolas a bheith agat" because I was trying to translate the English "to know about something". Could "fios" simply replace "eolas" in the sentence I had?